Farewell. The Flying Pig Has Left The Building.

Steve Hynd, August 16, 2012

After four years on the Typepad site, eight years total blogging, Newshoggers is closing it's doors today. We've been coasting the last year or so, with many of us moving on to bigger projects (Hey, Eric!) or simply running out of blogging enthusiasm, and it's time to give the old flying pig a rest.

We've done okay over those eight years, although never being quite PC enough to gain wider acceptance from the partisan "party right or wrong" crowds. We like to think we moved political conversations a little, on the ever-present wish to rush to war with Iran, on the need for a real Left that isn't licking corporatist Dem boots every cycle, on America's foreign misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq. We like to think we made a small difference while writing under that flying pig banner. We did pretty good for a bunch with no ties to big-party apparatuses or think tanks.

Those eight years of blogging will still exist. Because we're ending this typepad account, we've been archiving the typepad blog here. And the original blogger archive is still here. There will still be new content from the old 'hoggers crew too. Ron writes for The Moderate Voice, I post at The Agonist and Eric Martin's lucid foreign policy thoughts can be read at Democracy Arsenal.

I'd like to thank all our regular commenters, readers and the other bloggers who regularly linked to our posts over the years to agree or disagree. You all made writing for 'hoggers an amazingly fun and stimulating experience.

Thank you very much.

Note: This is an archive copy of Newshoggers. Most of the pictures are gone but the words are all here. There may be some occasional new content, John may do some posts and Ron will cross post some of his contributions to The Moderate Voice so check back.


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Thursday, November 11, 2010

Julia Ioffe in Moscow

By John Ballard


I know nothing about this writer but what I just learned.
She is apparently an independent journalist living in Moscow.
She has been published in several respected periodicals (FP, New Yorker, etc.) and Blake Hounshell retweeted her a little while ago.


Here is the context which I put together from a series of tweets she sent, according to Twitter, two hours ago.


>>I can't say that these are the most delicious cornichons I've ever had, which is weird because they're called "Merci: best quality."
>>So here's the thing, if you're a tourist coming to Russia, you need to stay in a hotel to qualify as a tourist. For that, you need 54 docs.
>>A friend, coming to stay with me for five days is not a tourist. "How is he a tourist if he's staying with you?"
>>Okay, what if he stays in a hotel? Then he needs about 3 different documents, faxed from the hotel, and brought over to the consulate.
>>Russia. If you want people to come here and spend money, STOP BEING SUCH FUCKING ASSHOLE IDIOTS FOR FUCK'S SAKE.

>>Another gem convo: What's the definition of a tourist? "Tourists stay in hotels."
>>What abt camping? "They need separate documents."
>>Seriously, though, Russia, sometimes your insistence on vicious retardation scares me. And gives me chest pains.

This is my kind of journalist. She made my list of people to follow on Twitter.



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